At 12:01 a.m. Friday, Sony’s PlayStation 4 arrives. The next Friday at midnight, it’s Microsoft’s Xbox One. The Friday after that is the Black Friday after Thanksgiving.

Retailers have high hopes for the new consoles. The video game industry expects to sell a combined 10 million of them by the end of March, and Sony says there have been more than 1 million pre-orders for the PS4.

GameStop has events starting at 6 p.m. Thursday with freebies and food. Some stores will have DJs to keep the crowd entertained until sales start at midnight.

Best Buy is opening stores at 10 p.m. both Thursdays so people can shop for games and accessories in advance.

GameStop and Best Buy both expect to have extra consoles on hand to sell to people who didn’t order in advance.

Wal-Mart is keeping its layaway desks open for post-midnight sales. Target took pre-orders but will open at regular times on Friday morning with limited additional consoles. Online shoppers also have to wait until 12:01 a.m.

Then the lines and extended hours will happen all over again Thanksgiving weekend.

Electronics chains are accustomed to handling big numbers fast. In September, it took just three days for sales of the newest Grand Theft Auto video game to reach $1 billion.

“This is a very exciting time for the industry,” GameStop chief financial officer Robert Lloyd said. “The new launches aren’t exactly like a Black Friday, but the potential is there.”

Battle plans

Grapevine-based GameStop started working on the launches of the PS4 and Xbox One more than a year ago. It polled 30 million PowerUp rewards customers about their interest in the consoles, Lloyd said, then asked them to sign up for email lists for the new releases. Those lists were used to solicit pre-orders.

Pre-orders were made with $100 deposits, and GameStop and Best Buy say they had customers for as many of the consoles as they could get from Sony and Microsoft.

Gaming pre-orders can’t be booked as sales until the sale is completed. As early as August, Best Buy said that its healthy same-store sales increase of 10.5 percent in the second quarter would have been more than 16 percent if gaming pre-orders had been included.

“We know we’ll be selling these things for a while,” Best Buy spokesman Jeff Shelman said.

Electronic Arts chief operating officer Peter Moore predicted during the company’s earnings call Oct. 29 that Sony and Microsoft will combine to sell 10 million consoles worldwide between now and the end of March.

The PS4 is priced at $399.99, and the Xbox One is $499.99.

No stores are offering discounts onthe new consoles, but GameStop has a buy-sell-trade store credit plan that customers can use to lower the price. Last Sunday, GameStop offered customers triple bonus credit for trade-ins.

“We believe we have the largest allotment because we have the largest overall market share in the business,” Lloyd said. GameStop has more than a 30 percent market share of the video game business. Its market share for new games is twice that high.

Accessories and more than 20 new games for the PS4 are also expected to generate big sales this weekend. New PS4 games include KillzoneShadow Fall, Activision’s Call of Duty: Ghosts, EA’s Battlefield 4 and Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag.

Alive and kicking

Before Sony and Microsoft announced the new consoles, there had been some dire predictions about the video game industry. Game downloads and mobile gaming have hurt the video game business. Some retailers downplayed the category in their stores, giving space to tablets and other goods as sales of video games and consoles posted month after month of double-digit declines.

GameStop stuck to its game plan, and this year it’s expecting that patience to pay off.

“We’ve remained committed to the category these past three years, and as a result we have good relationships with the game publishers and console makers,” Lloyd said.

GameStop started taking PS4 and Xbox One reservations in June. In September, stores received three hours of training to teach employees how to explain new features and hook up the consoles.

Wal-Mart recently updated its video game aisles with signs and space for the new consoles and games.

At Best Buy, there will be two lines: one for pre-orders and one for walk-ins for as long as the supply lasts.

Customers should go to the store where they pre-ordered and bring a photo ID and confirmation numbers and receipts.

RadioShack will have PS4s in select stores Friday, a spokeswoman for the Fort Worth-based chain said.

Retailers are slashing prices on the two previous game consoles, the PS3 and Xbox 360. Those models are still in demand.

North American consumers have bought more than 100 million Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii consoles since they became available in 2005 and 2006, according to research firm NPD Group.

About 14 percent of Americans plan to buy video games this holiday season. That’s up slightly from last year and puts the category ahead of footwear, housewares and sporting goods.

When Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 came out in the mid-2000s, both had monthly sales growth that lasted about three years.

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